Lisa LaPlante was one of the first reporters hired at FOX 17 when News at Ten debuted in January 1999.

GRAND RAPIDS – FOX 17 reporter Lisa LaPlante, one of the original members of the WXMI-TV news team, is leaving the station after nearly 13 years.

LaPlante has accepted the position of marketing and communications manager for the Kent County Health Department.

Her final day at FOX 17 is Aug. 31, just weeks after reporter Hailey Frances left the station to take a new position in Arizona.

Leaving the news business is a “gut-wrenching decision,” LaPlante said.

“I really love news, and my many friends at FOX 17,” she said. “When we started news 13 years ago, so many of us were single and had no friends or relatives in the area. We became a family over the years.”

LaPlante was the first reporter hired by former news director Tim Dye in November 1998 for the start-up of FOX 17 News at Ten, which debuted on air the following January.

“When I started at FOX 17 nearly 13 years ago, we had one show, 35 minutes a day,” she recalled. “It has been exciting to see the growth to seven hours of news a day.”

Three members of the original FOX 17 team remain: news anchor Michele DeSelms, chief meteorologist Peter Chan, and chief photojournalist Brian Farber.

LaPlante was honored by the Michigan Associated Press with the award for Best Enterprise/Investigative Reporting in 2007 and also is a three-time Michigan Emmy nominee.

Before moving to West Michigan, LaPlante was a general assignment reporter for WEYI-TV in Flint from 1995 to 1998.

A 1995 graduate of the University of Michigan, she began her career in 1994 at WDIV-TV in Detroit, first as as a news intern, then as an assignment editor/field producer.

Here's a look at some of Lisa LaPlante's work as a reporter for FOX 17:

Frances, meanwhile, left FOX 17 after 14 months in West Michigan to return to her hometown in Phoenix, where she attended Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

Frances came from Houston, where she spent one year at KIAH-TV as an entertainment/feature reporter, a general assignment reporter and as a fill-in anchor. Prior to that, she served as a reporter and morning news anchor at WCAV-TV in Charlottesville, Va.